


Longhand Texting

by V_V_lala



Category: You Belong With Me - University of Rochester Yellowjackets (Music Video)
Genre: Background Het, Backstory, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 13:16:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8846524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_V_lala/pseuds/V_V_lala
Summary: How Dan and Kevin began to exchange messages written with marker on paper instead of texting like ordinary people of the 21st century.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).



Dan was staring. He knew staring was not polite and somewhere in the back of his mind a warning bell was screaming that he needed to _stop_ before he got caught and had to face down a lifetime of embarrassment. 

But it was _hard._ The guy in the dorm building across from his had _great_ biceps and was currently engaged in a physical exercise that showed off just _how_ great they were. He was, perhaps, not the most attractive man Dan had ever seen but he sure as hell had an amazing body and what did he expect, anyway, when he worked out shirtless in front of his window with the curtains open? 

Suddenly, the boy in the window turned and looked straight at Dan. 

Dan froze, caught like a deer in headlights; he had been too entranced in his fantasies to even look away fast enough. His neighbor gave him an uncertain little nod. On impulse, embarrassed at being caught after all, Dan pulled a clean sheet of paper from his art things and wrote on it in black marker: **_Hi. I’m Dan._** He held it up for the other boy to see. 

There was a moment’s pause and then the window was empty. Dan bit his lip. “Good job, weirdo,” he muttered to himself. “You scared him off.”

To his surprise, the other boy returned within seconds and held up a similar piece of paper on which he’d scrawled: **_I’m Kevin. Are you a freshman?_**

Dan could feel every thump of his suddenly pounding heart as he wrote out his reply. **_Yea. Film major._**

Kevin smiled at him and wrote on the same paper he had used before. **_Cool. I’m Econ. You play baseball?_**

Dan winced and shook his head. He’d played kickball. Once. 

Kevin nodded and laughed. Dan couldn’t quite tell at this distance if it was good natured and understanding or more of the oh-my-god-this-loser sort. Then Kevin held up another message, now on a new piece of paper: **_Dining hall is still open. You wanna get ice cream?_**

Dan nearly fell over. Was this a date? Was he being asked out? Probably not, but… He could have just nodded, but instead he wrote and held up: **_YES!_**

*****

Dan hated his life. It was hot, the upstairs neighbors were having a ruckus of a party and he had managed to smash the screen of his phone by dropping it down a flight of concrete stairs. Tomorrow, he would take it to get fixed, but today he had no phone, as the shattered screen made it impossible to read anything, and a lot of anxiety that Kevin had been texting him and he hadn’t been answering. 

It was so like him to exchange numbers with the good-looking, easy-going guy next door only to become completely incommunicado a day later with no explanation. Not in the sense that he would do this _on purpose_ but it was just the kind of exquisite bad luck he would be plagued with. 

Dan changed and sat down on the wide windowsill with an old sketchpad to wait for Kevin to get home. He threw open the window, knowing that even though the distance between their dorm buildings was too large to have a conversation, he could at least maybe get Kevin’s attention if he yelled. 

About an hour passed. Finally, light came on in the window across from his, and Dan focused his attention on Kevin’s room. He was certain Kevin would open the window: in this heat it would be strange if he didn’t. It happened just as Dan predicted, though Kevin saw him before he had a chance to shout and, probably, make a fool of himself to the entire courtyard below. Kevin waved as he threw open his own window, then made a phone gesture. 

Dan made a face and lifted a message he had pre-written. **_Sorry, broke my phone._**

 ** __**Kevin made a sympathetic face, then rummaged around for some paper. ** _Sucks._**

 ****That was brief, though Dan knew writing out messages to each other wasn’t exactly an effective means of communication. Which is why he held up the second message he had written while waiting. ** _Dinner?_**

 ****Kevin shoot his head, then explained. ** _Can’t. Game tonight. Warm ups in 20._**

 ** __**Dan’s heart sank. He had been looking forward to another dinner with Kevin, to getting to know him better, to finally having a pleasant ending to this godawful day.

Kevin held up another message. **_You should come._**

 ** __**Dan didn’t have a pre-written message for this, so he reached for his sketchpad to rip out a sheet—only to find that there were no blank ones. The most empty of them had a large grinning fox on in the top right corner, too large to simply fold back and out of sight. He groaned at the persistence of his bad luck and used the sheet anyway since no others were available. ** _Can’t. No ticket._**

 ****Now Kevin grinned. It took Dan by surprise until he held up a small slip of paper which looked like a ticket from the school’s events office. Dan grinned back and nodded.

Before leaving, Kevin held up a parting message: **_Cute fox._**

 ** __*******

“Come on, Natasha, give me my phone back.”

Kevin’s girlfriend gave him a long-suffering look. “Hold on, baby, I only have, like, fifteen minutes left on this video. You can use my phone if you need to.” 

“Whatever, it’s fine.” He only really needed his phone because he wanted to text Dan and he wasn’t going to use Natasha’s phone for that. Especially since he didn’t actually remember Dan’s number. (Did anyone bother memorizing phone numbers these days?) He needed to tell Dan that they couldn’t go to dinner together that night because he was going out with his new girlfriend. Kevin also needed to thank him for his History of Ancient Civilization notes – it was the only class they had together and thus certainly the only class Kevin could possibly get an A in this semester. Which made him think that he should try to set up some study sessions with Dan. It would be much more fun than studying alone, not to mention an excuse to spend more time with that adora—silly nerd.

There was just something about Dan that made Kevin feel comfortable – like coming home. Natasha was beautiful and sexy and all his teammates were jealous of him, but she was…high maintenance and sometimes he wondered whether she was in fact interested in him or not. Whereas Dan always let him talk about the things he loved, like baseball and punk rock and—

Kevin shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was working himself up over nothing. Natasha was still on his phone so he went to look if Dan was in his room. 

He was. Dan’s the curtains open were open so Kevin had a good view. He sat cross-legged on his bed, his hair tussled as though he had just gotten out of the shower, in a t-shirt and pajama pants, which sported some odd design that was difficult to make out because of the distance. Kevin could swear they had giraffes on them, though. He wrote out a message and waited by the window in hopes that Dan might look up from his laptop. 

It took him a couple of minutes and some frantic waving from Kevin, but finally Dan saw him and grinned as their eyes met. Kevin held up his message. **_Thanks for notes! Sorry can’t do dinner tonight_**. 

****He waited for Dan to write back. His message was written in what looked like purple crayon instead of the usual black pen or marker. ** _Any time! No phone?_**

**_No. Natasha’s on it._ **

**_Natasha?_ **

**__**Oh damn! ****Kevin realized. He had not had a chance to tell Dan about Natasha yet. They’d only been talking for about a week and last night was the first time they really hooked up and decided to date. He gave Dan an apologetic look as he held up his next message. ** _Girlfriend._**

****Dan’s face changed. Kevin watched it go to surprise to… He wanted to say sadness but he wasn’t certain why Dan would be _sad._ Probably he was upset that Kevin hadn’t mentioned a girl. Kevin picked up a new page to write on…

“Babe, I’m done,” Natasha’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Kevin looked back just as she slid off the bed and came to stand next to him, her hand sliding up his arm and onto his shoulder. “We should go before it gets too late.” 

“Ah, right, yea. Why don’t you go…ah…get us the directions. I’ll be right there.”

She looked uncertainly at him, then at the paper and marker in his hand. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing—give me a sec, I’ll be right there.”

“Ok.” She kissed his check and went to find her shoes and look up directions to the party they were going to on his phone. 

Kevin looked back to Dan’s room. Dan was still watching him and when Kevin turned, he flushed a deep red. There was still that miffed look in his eyes. Kevin sighed and wrote out: **_Have to go. Tell u everything later._**

*****

Kevin and Dan sat on the steps of the Student Union. The dinner rush meant that the plaza was almost empty with only a few stragglers who had not made their way to the dining halls yet. The boys had had their dinner early and now sat together, side-by-side, enjoying the quiet and the first bite of frost in the late-autumn air. Kevin was eating chips, Dan sketching something on his drawing pad, squinting in the faint light of the streetlamps. 

Kevin had finally told him everything about his new girlfriend, though he seemed oddly reluctant to do so, and Dan found his sketches to be coming out grotesque and distressed. 

“You know,” Kevin said suddenly, glancing over Dan’s arm to see what he was drawing. “I like our little longhand texting.”

“Longhand texting?” Dan asked distractedly without looking up. 

“Yea. You know?” Keven pantomimed holding up a sheet of paper. 

“Oh.” Dan stopped sketching. “It’s…it’s not as efficient as texting.”

“No, but it’s kinda fun. And I live in the hopes of getting another fox.”

Dan flushed and laughed, a little embarrassed. “It wasn’t even a very good sketch.” 

Kevin only shrugged in response. 

“Alight. We could keep doing it.” He picked up his pencil again as Kevin said something approving of their agreement through a new mouthful of chips. Dan actually liked this idea – that he and Kevin might have something unique of their own, something that Kevin did only with him. They might not be dating, but at least they would have this.


End file.
